Current problems with itemization:

No +STR DPS neck.
No +STR DPS capes.
Only 2 +STR dps rings which both drop off Saphiron(normal and heroic).
Haste rating stacked on the Paladin DPS set (haste rating is weaker point for point than attack power for dps).
Leather turns out better for damage sometimes since it has more DPS stats on it than Plate (3-4 stats vs 2-3 stats typical on plate).
Haste rating stacked on everything when it is a poor stat for many classes.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to post more. Anyway, could we get a response? Are you planning on fixing it? We are being left in the dark here.

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Q u o t e:


It is not our goal to make sure that every piece you can get is perfect for your class or spec. A lot of the game's depth comes from those tough decisions when you're not sure if a piece is really an upgrade or not, or if that wasted stat is worth the other enormous stat on the piece, or if you are better off passing a minor upgrade to someone else for which it is a huge upgrade.

Upgrades are also boring if every piece = your previous piece but with +2 on all of the stats.

If someone just can't do their job because they lack critical gear, that's a slightly different issue. There have been cases where a critical item (say a tanking shield) was too rare, or upgrades were too hard to come by (say druid or paladin tanks in Sunwell). We think there is a little bit of that going on at the moment, but not too much, and of course we like to add more drops, vendor items, craftables and enchants and gems over time (and need room to do so).

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I get your point, but when classes that benefit very little from haste, for example, have alot of it on their tier gear, this decision making process is not an option. Its not like we can borrow another classes tier gear and decide from there.

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Q u o t e:


I get your point, but when classes that benefit very little from haste, for example, have alot of it on their tier gear, this decision making process is not an option. Its not like we can borrow another classes tier gear and decide from there.

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Haste is a strange stat where for some classes it's amazing and for others it's just meh. I agree that the tier gear's itemization should be borderline custom-fit (it IS the tier gear after all), but at the same time if you have the mathematically best piece available with the stat layout, it's boring to upgrade.

"Oh yay, I got +10 to all my stats by upgrading to this piece and it even looks exactly alike."

Not that I'm complaining about the lack of a clownsuit.

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Q u o t e:


It is not our goal to make sure that every piece you can get is perfect for your class or spec. A lot of the game's depth comes from those tough decisions when you're not sure if a piece is really an upgrade or not, or if that wasted stat is worth the other enormous stat on the piece, or if you are better off passing a minor upgrade to someone else for which it is a huge upgrade.

Upgrades are also boring if every piece = your previous piece but with +2 on all of the stats.

If someone just can't do their job because they lack critical gear, that's a slightly different issue. There have been cases where a critical item (say a tanking shield) was too rare, or upgrades were too hard to come by (say druid or paladin tanks in Sunwell). We think there is a little bit of that going on at the moment, but not too much, and of course we like to add more drops, vendor items, craftables and enchants and gems over time (and need room to do so).

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what about bad stats on tier gear, everything on the hunter set has haste, and the mage helm has almost as much spirit as the holy priest helm.

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Q u o t e:
It is not our goal to make sure that every piece you can get is perfect for your class or spec. A lot of the game's depth comes from those tough decisions when you're not sure if a piece is really an upgrade or not, or if that wasted stat is worth the other enormous stat on the piece, or if you are better off passing a minor upgrade to someone else for which it is a huge upgrade.

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Even our tier gear? Lock tier gear is filled with subpar haste and Mage tier gear has plain useless Spirit.

I definitely agree, Ghost, but in the case of our tier class sets we don't have quite so much of a choice if we'd like to get set bonuses. In the case of the Warlock set we've got a LOT of Haste on it, while that stat is of varying values to different specs. Good for Destro, mediocre for Demo, and pretty bad for Aff. Any chance we could see Haste toned down a bit and see some of the ilevel moved into more universally useful stats?

please just make tier gear hit crit and spellpower :) haste is ftl

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Q u o t e:
I definitely agree, Ghost, but in the case of our tier class sets we don't have quite so much of a choice if we'd like to get set bonuses. In the case of the Warlock set we've got a LOT of Haste on it, while that stat is of varying values to different specs. Good for Destro, mediocre for Demo, and pretty bad for Aff. Any chance we could see Haste toned down a bit and see some of the ilevel moved into more universally useful stats?

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currently, as i plan on raiding as affliction until there is nothing left to raid - the best gear set up for me involves only one piece of our t7, the chest piece. sort of a shame, plagueheart was always my favorite : /

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Q u o t e:
please just make tier gear hit crit and spellpower :) haste is ftl

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Honestly though, isn't this just a reason to make haste more useful? Haste is powerful, especially since it scales other stats as well (although to be fair, just about everything does that), even if it's less powerful per stat point than other stats. I'd rather have haste be useful for everyone than just have it removed.

Also spirit should be awesome.

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Q u o t e:


It is not our goal to make sure that every piece you can get is perfect for your class or spec. A lot of the game's depth comes from those tough decisions when you're not sure if a piece is really an upgrade or not, or if that wasted stat is worth the other enormous stat on the piece, or if you are better off passing a minor upgrade to someone else for which it is a huge upgrade.

Upgrades are also boring if every piece = your previous piece but with +2 on all of the stats.

If someone just can't do their job because they lack critical gear, that's a slightly different issue. There have been cases where a critical item (say a tanking shield) was too rare, or upgrades were too hard to come by (say druid or paladin tanks in Sunwell). We think there is a little bit of that going on at the moment, but not too much, and of course we like to add more drops, vendor items, craftables and enchants and gems over time (and need room to do so).

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This appears to me (a very n00bish raider I'll admit) to promote a very disturbing raid mechanic.
It would seem that if haste is on all of our gear and we do not get much benefit that it would be better to pull in a class that does get a DPS boost from haste. I'm not sure if it would really work like this, but if it ends up hurting paladins in raids, I don't think anyone is going to be happy.

Seems to me the developers should have thought a bit more about gear homogenization.

On a separate note, I can't find ANY upgrades from my honor PvP gear in the Howling Fjord. It's all haste, so it's basically garbage. I definitely see GC's point about gear choices being harder, but if the gear harps on ONE stat that isn't beneficial, there's no choice at all there.

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Q u o t e:


Honestly though, isn't this just a reason to make haste more useful? Haste is powerful, especially since it scales other stats as well (although to be fair, just about everything does that), even if it's less powerful per stat point than other stats. I'd rather have haste be useful for everyone than just have it removed.

Also spirit should be awesome.

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they already nerfed melee haste because it was too good. I dont see how they would revert changes and buff it again.

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Q u o t e:


they already nerfed melee haste because it was too good. I dont see how they would revert changes and buff it again.

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Well, if it was too good and now it's not good enough, there should be a middle ground of sorts? I mean, it obviously affects different classes to different degrees (Compare rogues and paladins, for instance), but it shouldn't be relegated to an 'ew get it off my gear' position.

Although I also think a lot of folks are overreacting.

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Q u o t e:


Well, if it was too good and now it's not good enough, there should be a middle ground of sorts? I mean, it obviously affects different classes to different degrees (Compare rogues and paladins, for instance), but it shouldn't be relegated to an 'ew get it off my gear' position.

Although I also think a lot of folks are overreacting.

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it was never 'too good'

I actually don't have a problem with Ghostcrawler's points on this (which are the points of the dev team to be entirely fair). It's annoying to some extent to have non-optimal gear, and as a Death Knight, I find myself ending up as Tank when our Tank has a bad run of RNG. I'm geared heavy in stam and Strength, and my build is more dominantly a tank build, so sometimes it works out. Other times, not so much, but I try to gear in such a way as to handle things gone awry.

This is excusable (to some extent) when I can do these two things well in the same spec. Less than optimal without a gear swap, but actually do them-I'm ok with this...

As a DPS / Tank.

As an Elemental Shaman, with my circle of friends, it's pretty rare that things go catastrophically bad and I have to main heal. It happens, sure, but it's not a common occurrence. Non-optimal gear for my Shaman, which again, is Elemental, is really starting to anger me. Even in my 2.3 / 2.4 badge gear, other than rings and neck, I expect I will replace -nothing- until I am in level 80 dungeons, and even then, I will replace gear sparingly. There is a lot of Resto mail available, and there's nothing wrong with that, but we're already hurting a bit on the DPS front-we are relying much more heavily on the spec and procs to do our job with very little actual control over when we will see meaningful upgrades.

I'm lucky. I have great gear on my Shaman for now, and I expect it to carry me for at least the next eight levels. For anyone else who goes Elemental, I feel a degree of pity.

Does it have to be optimal? Not so much. But it'd be nice if it wasn't god awful.

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Q u o t e:
it was never 'too good'

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Q u o t e:

they already nerfed melee haste because it was too good. I dont see how they would revert changes and buff it again.

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What.

Haste's entire point is to eat item budget so we don't get ridiculous things like 80% crit. It's not really supposed to be good. Still, with seal of blood I thought pallies were one of the classes that benefited most from haste. You've got it good. Imagine being a kitty with 300 damage white attacks that are only about a fifth of your damage.

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Q u o t e:


I get your point, but when classes that benefit very little from haste, for example, have alot of it on their tier gear, this decision making process is not an option. Its not like we can borrow another classes tier gear and decide from there.

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lol mages... spirit

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Q u o t e:

we like to add more drops, vendor items, craftables and enchants and gems over time (and need room to do so).

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So you will add more items. Great.
What about class sets being designed better? Will the current ones be changed? Why are there stats on the class sets that are bad for the class/spec (i.e. haste on ret paladin gear)? Is this going to be a continuing trend? Ideally the class sets should use optimal, or at least not the bottom of the barrel stats.

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Q u o t e:
Haste's entire point is to eat item budget so we don't get ridiculous things like 80% crit. It's not really supposed to be good. Still, with seal of blood I thought pallies were one of the classes that benefited most from haste. You've got it good. Imagine being a kitty with 300 damage white attacks that are only about a fifth of your damage.

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Trouble is, they made other stats way better for us. Strength is crazy good, crit often provides a portion of our utility, hit garners us mana, etc. Besides, I've seen the theorycrafting- Haste comes in just above spellpower (outdated) and ArP. Hell, these days int seems much more useful...